Ray of Hope Read online

  Lenora took her hands and rubbed from her cheeks up toward her forehead, then down her face, raking over her eyes, and ending at her mouth. She then crossed her hands and pressed them against her chest. “It’s me. I was wrong. Once again, I was wrong.” She took her hands down. “I saw Boaz’s car when I drove up. Then him standing there at the door like he’s the man, and I lost it…. I just lost it. He and I spoke earlier today. He was trying to find out why the girls were here, and how long they would be staying.”

  “Well, that’s really not any of his business or concern,” Ma Ray said.

  “Exactly! And that’s exactly what I told him. But he made it clear he intended to let you know what he felt about my incompetence—”

  “Is that what he said? Your incompetence?”

  “No. No, he didn’t say that word exactly. That’s my shorthand for cutting through all the noise of what he means but doesn’t say. He does think that I take advantage of you. But, Ma”—she turned squarely to her mother and grabbed both her hands—“I don’t. I would never purposely do anything to hurt you. Never purposely. You’ve been my rock. You’re been so wonderful to me. I promise you, when I do things that hurt you or look like I’m trying to get over on you, I’m not doing it intentionally.”

  Ma Ray took one of her hands and patted Lenora’s a few times. “Oh, I know.”

  “Mama! Ma Ray! You want a cookie?” Nia said as she walked into the room with one large cookie in her hand and chocolate smeared all over her face.

  “Oh, baby, look at you! Come here,” Lenora said with her arms open. She picked Nia up and sat her on her lap.

  “There’s a whole bunch of them,” Nia said, raising her hands as though to show how high the cookies reached. “Sahara and Crystal keep making more and more and more.” She wiggled a little, readjusting her body more comfortably on her mother’s lap.

  “That many?” Lenora said, smiling. “Well, I suppose Ma Ray and I need to get in there and get us one or two.”

  “You’d better. Before Kyle eats them all up,” Nia said, nodding. “He thinks he’s Cookie Monster.”

  “Oh, my, I guess we’d really better get in there, then,” Ma Ray said as she leaned her mouth down close to Nia’s cookie.

  “You want a bite, Ma Ray?” Nia said.

  Ma Ray smiled, then took a little nibble. “Thank you, precious,” she said.

  “You welcome,” Nia said, then jumped down and ran back to the kitchen.

  Chapter 13

  And before they were laid down, she came up unto them upon the roof.

  —Joshua 2:8

  Sahara went upstairs to her room as soon as her mother came in the kitchen to get cookies. She checked under her bed and in the closet to be sure Junebug was not there. He was gone. She slowly let out a sigh of relief.

  She really didn’t want to be around her mother. Uncle Boaz had been really great, better than she thought he would be. But she was glad he’d left shortly after her mother arrived. She could tell he wanted to talk to her … alone … and she really didn’t want him trying out his psychobabble junk on her. She already knew she was being rebellious. She knew she was giving everybody a hard time. She knew she was wrong about most of the decisions she was making lately. But for some reason, she just couldn’t help herself.

  At seventeen, she absolutely hated being stuck in the country with her grandmother and deprived of all the real comforts of life. Ma Ray didn’t have a video game system. Their mother wouldn’t let them bring theirs, because Kyle liked playing it too much to be without it. Ma Ray didn’t have a computer, although their mother had offered to buy her one as a present. She and Crystal both laughed when they heard their mother discussing a computer for Ma Ray. Ma Ray flat out asked her, “What on God’s green earth, pray tell, do I need with a computer?”

  Their mother tried to tell her how she could e-mail people. How they could instantly send her pictures of the family. She could see Nia and Kyle practically grow up before her in real time. Ma Ray told her daughter she could save her money on that foolish waste. She’d rather see the family in person and they could bring her copies of their photos.

  Edmond, their stepfather, told their mother what Ma Ray was really trying to say to her. “Your mother was probably politely saying: how can you spend money to buy me a gift of a computer when you owe me money, lots of money at that? She would, in all probability, prefer being paid back some of what you owe her instead of you spending more of her money on something she doesn’t want or need.”

  Well, that small statement started another blowup between the happy couple. But that was nothing new for Sahara. No matter why an argument appeared to start in their house, the central theme always came back to money. Or more to the point: the lack thereof. But that never stopped their mother from spending and throwing it away “like it grows on trees.” That’s what Edmond had told her more than a few dozen times.

  Edmond really got upset with their mother whenever she put money in church instead of paying a bill that was due—or worse, past due. That always pushed him over the edge. Sahara often heard Edmond telling their mother how stupid she was to put money in church when the power company had already sent a final disconnect notice. But their mother would keep doing it, saying how she didn’t want to be cursed with a curse. That God would rebuke the devourer. Then she’d turn to Ma Ray to bail her out, yet again.

  And Ma Ray never let their mother down. Which was why she and Crystal were over there in the first place. Edmond had made it perfectly clear that he was fed up with trying to figure them out. She didn’t care how much he tried telling them he couldn’t love them any more had they been of his own flesh, Sahara knew his fuse was shorter with her and Crystal because they weren’t his biological children.

  That’s what made her the maddest about all of this. No one told the real truth. Their words said one thing, while their actions spoke an entirely different truth. Edmond always took the side of Kyle and Nia, his children. It didn’t matter what was going on; if they cried, he would run in and say to her or Crystal, “What did you do?”

  It didn’t matter that Kyle was about to stick a case knife in the electrical socket after having taken the childproof protectors out and she’d just yanked the knife out of his hand. It didn’t matter that Nia had uncapped a marker and was in ready position to draw pictures on the wall just before she snatched the marker out of her hand. It didn’t matter that Nia had put something in her mouth she’d just picked up off the floor and Sahara had reached inside and pulled it out before she swallowed it. Sahara was sure plenty of babies had eaten pennies and junk off the floor before anyone stopped them. But she’d done her best to at least limit her little sister’s “junk” food consumption.

  Edmond, and even her mother, always came barreling in with fixed frowns on their faces as they practically yelled, with spit flying everywhere, “What did you do?”

  At school, as long as she was making straight As, no one paid her any attention. It was always the ones who needed extra help that got any acknowledgment that they even existed. The first C she made on her report card caused her mother to go into overtime damage-control mode. For the first time in a long time, she acknowledged Sahara was there. And it wasn’t that she purposely tried to make bad grades after that … because of that. Then again, or maybe on some subconscious level, she did. All of a sudden, the popular boys in school began paying attention to her. She was no longer being treated like an L7 (a square), and it felt really good to belong.

  The girls with power invited her into their inner circle. She was glad she was no longer alone. Then there was this party where all the special people would be. She’d asked her mother about going. Of course, if her mother didn’t know the family, she wasn’t going to let her attend. Her mother said, “No,” which should have been the end of it. But then came along a six-foot-three hunk of a hunk named Dollar.

  Dollar was every girl’s dream. He still was, the way women of all ages flocked to him. At the time, Doll
ar was a seventeen-year-old with women twice his age chasing him. That was evident when he had one of the teachers giving him private tutoring lessons after school, in her home, no less. He let everybody know that he’d learned how to “do the laundry” a new and better way, which was no big deal for Sahara, since she occasionally did the laundry at home herself.

  “No, he’s beatin’ dem cakes,” one of the girls in her newfound group explained.

  “Well, okay,” Sahara said. “That’s generally how you make a cake. We use an electric beater, but my grandmother said before electric beaters came along, they would hold the bowl and use a wooden spoon to beat their batter for their cakes.”

  That caused all of the girls to burst into a full-blown laugh.

  “So, I suppose you don’t know what ‘jeepin’’ is or ‘making cookies’?” Gina said.

  That’s when it hit her how out of the loop on the latest teen language she was. All of these phrases were codes for “having sex.” Words and phrases teenagers used to keep their parents and the older generation from knowing what they were talking about.

  So when Dollar showed an interest in her and told her he would like to “hit it” sooner rather than later, her brains took a total leave of absence. All she knew was that someone made her feel like she was wanted. And that was what was missing in her life. Whenever Dollar saw her walking his way, he would shift his weight onto his back leg and, with his piercing brown eyes, scale her body from head to toe as though she were his favorite dessert coming his way. Even the way he smacked his lips, which should have been insulting, made her feel like she was special.

  He wore down her logical thinking by telling her how much she was “off the chain,” “off the heezy,” “off the hizzle,” and “off the hook.” He called her “jiggy,” which she learned meant he thought she was hot, attractive, and most definitely sexy. What girl doesn’t want to feel like she can command someone’s attention in that way?

  Dollar convinced her to find a way to “come to the most crackalackin’ party of the year.” Even if it meant defying her mother. Sahara hadn’t quite reached the place of defiance at that time. So she devised a plan to spend the night at one of her friends’ house where they would be doing wonderful things like Bible Trivia and eating chili hot dogs.

  Sahara’s mother believed her; she had no reason not to. Only, Sahara didn’t go to the friend’s house. In fact, Sahara learned a valuable lesson from all of this: If you’re going to tell your folks you ‘re spending the night with a friend, make sure you let that friend in on the plan so she doesn’t call your house and ask your mother if she can speak to you, then proceed to say, “What spend the night? She’s not over here with me.”

  Needless to say, Sahara and Sheila were no longer friends. That friendship was severed … lost that night, as was something else that had been a treasure to her. She’d given up her pearls. And if she could go back and live that night over again, she would most assuredly not have given up something so precious. It wasn’t worth it. Dollar wasn’t worth it. And all those who said, and continued to say, differently, she soon learned, merely lied because they—like she now—could never go back. Not ever again. And as Ma Ray had often told her, “Misery loves company. When folks are miserable and can’t change something, they want others to be miserable, too.”

  Those were some of the lessons she learned that night in losing her virginity. Still, for whatever reason, she couldn’t manage to find her way out of this rabbit’s hole.

  Sahara pulled out her laptop that her mother let her bring, wishing she could connect to the Web and at least chat with a few friends, check e-mails, maybe play a few games online. But with Ma Ray having only dial-up connection, if you used the phone line, it wasn’t even worth the effort to try. Just then, the house phone rang.

  After a few minutes, Ma Ray hollered up the stairs, “Sahara, phone’s for you!”

  “I got it!” Sahara yelled back. She picked up the receiver of the phone while wondering who, besides her mother, could be calling her on Ma Ray’s line. “Hello.”

  “Hi, this is Andre Woods. Were you busy?”

  Sahara sat back against the headboard of her bed. “What’s up?”

  “If you’re busy, I can call back later. Or you can call me when it’s a good time for you.”

  “I’m fine. What do you want?” she said. She then noticed she was mindlessly twirling her index finger around the black cord attached to the Mickey Mouse telephone she was using.

  Puzzled at why she’d done that, Sahara quickly yanked her finger loose and sighed loud enough that she was pretty sure he most likely heard her.

  Chapter 14

  And she said unto the men, I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror is fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.

  —Joshua 2:9

  “Your grandmother asked me to get you and Crystal signed up for the youth conference our church is putting on in a couple of weeks,” Andre said. “But truthfully, it is abundantly clear that you’re not interested in attending.”

  “It’s like I said, I don’t think we’ll even be here in two weeks.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m calling because I didn’t want to go to the trouble of setting things up and having your grandmother pay for it if you’re not planning on going.”

  Sahara sat up straighter. “What’s it to you? I mean, if you sign us up and we don’t go, they can refund my grandmother’s money.”

  “It’s nonrefundable,” Andre said.

  “Nonrefundable? What kind of a scam is that?”

  “Not a scam. It’s what they’re doing to keep people from signing up and then backing out later. When you’re paying a hundred and twenty dollars to attend an event like this, you’ll be sure to fulfill your commitment if you know you can’t back out at the last minute. Besides, there is a lot of expense associated with this. Breakfast and lunch provided for two days. They have people they’re paying to come in to give workshops and to speak. There are workbooks, other books, and things they put in the packages for each attendee. There’s the purity ring that’s included along with the things for the ceremony that’s scheduled to take place. Oh, and there’s the reception that follows the purity ceremony on Saturday evening, after the conference concludes, with a live band and everything.”

  “Yee-hi,” Sahara said dryly.

  “See. You know …”

  “What?”

  “That’s okay. Just forget it.”

  “No, what were you going to say?”

  “Sahara, you’re a beautiful girl, a very beautiful girl—”

  “And?”

  “Not and … but.”

  “But?”

  “Yes. You are a very beautiful girl, but your attitude is bugly.”

  “Bugly?” Sahara started laughing. “Bugly? Are you trying to be hip and trying to say fugly?”

  “No. I’m trying to say just what I said: bugly.”

  “Still, you’re trying to call my attitude ugly?”

  “If the Prada fits,” Andre said.

  She laughed some more. “Like I even care what you think or have to say, Cletus.”

  “My name is not Cletus; it’s Andre. Andre Woods.”

  “Yeah, same thing. Cletus meaning country … backward. You know, like living out in the woods. And Woods like … out in the woods. Cletus.”

  “Oh, I see you’re just full of it.”

  “Oooh, look at Cletus. Trying to make your way to this century with your comebacks, huh?”

  “No, I’m just keeping it 100 … just telling the truth.”

  “Wow, you must have a book that tells you all of the crisp things to say. How else would someone like you know about anything new like ‘keeping it 100’?”

  “You know what? I’m glad you’re not coming to the youth conference.”

  “Who says I’m not coming? Oh, I’m coming. Me and my sister will be there. So you can do whatever you need to do to make it happe
n and let them know that Sahara will be in the house. A’ight. Peace out,” she said, then slammed down the phone. Sahara fell facedown onto the bed. “Oh, God, what did I just do?”

  “Sahara?” Ma Ray said as she tapped softly on the door.

  Sahara sat up and tried to wipe the frown off her face. “Yes.”

  Ma Ray walked in. “Did you give Andre all the information he needed for the youth conference?”

  “Ma Ray, I don’t know why you want to throw away your money on that stupid conference. You know it’s going to be boring. You’ve given enough money to our family. I don’t think you ought to waste it on something lame like this.”

  “Lame? Honey, I don’t think something that will probably turn out to bless you, be beneficial to you and your sister, and contrary to what you think right now, just might turn out to be more fun than you believe, is lame.”

  “Of course you don’t, Ma Ray. You don’t know what real life is like out there. You live in your little la-la land of church and ‘Jesus making ways out of no ways.’ You live in a place where all you do is pray to and praise God. You don’t have a clue what’s out there in the real everyday world.”

  “I know that Satan is still going to and fro, like a roaring lion, trying to see who he can devour. I know that was the way it was in my day, and I’m sure it’s even more so today. But if you think just because I’m old now that I arrived here this old—”

  “Ma Ray, I’m not a child. I know you have your problems, too. And I know you were a teenager just like Mama was a teenager, just like my daddy was a teenager, just like Edmond was a teenager ‘once upon a time.’ But when you were coming up, y’all could marry at thirteen and fourteen. You didn’t have all the pressures we have to stay pure and keep it together. You could see someone you wanted to be with and marry them, skipping some of the temptations we have to fend off. That’s what I’m talking about. Then we get put on blast—”